In typical networked-based publication systems, a buyer can enter a commerce system's web-site and from the listings published in the web-site, select a desired listing and participate, if the listing is on auction, in the bidding process. The bidding process starts by entering the website and watching the last bid before deciding to bid on a specific listing. In other words, buyers typically interact with the commerce system through the website and are able to see, on any listing, the latest updates uploaded by the seller.
Sellers may have access to other tools provided by the networked-based commerce systems in the form of offline client applications. An example of such a client application is eBay Turbo Lister. Using these offline tools, sellers can introduce new listings by entering information on a specific listing, such as: listing description, start price, type of sale (fixed-price vs. auction), auction start time, auction duration, etc. Sellers may be able to update their online listings, from the client application. Moreover, listing revisions, for the most part, are done on a one-off basis and are manual and tedious for the user. Any entering of a new listing or editing of the existing listings does not affect the online data on the web site until it is manually uploaded by the seller to the system.
The synchronization of data between a network-based publication (or data) system and its client applications, or between a client application and multiple data or publication systems present a number of technical challenges. For example, editing of active listings directly from within the client application and having access to the latest information, as displayed on the site, from a client application.